Farmers, angry over alleged attacks on children and damage to crops, have reportedly poisoned at least 50 rare jackals to death in India. According to a forest official KK Singh, the local villagers were irritated because of damages to their sugarcane crops. These jackals allegedly attacked the children while looking for food.

The forest officials found carcasses of the jackals, which are the endangered species protected by law in India, spread in sugarcane fields in past four days on the outskirts of Dudhwa National Park. The park is located some 155 miles southwest of Lucjnow in Uttar Pradesh.

The Dudhwa National Park is the home to tigers and Indian rhinos and the jackals mostly live in nearby unprotected forest areas.

Singh said:

Farmers have poisoned more than four dozen jackals to death in the past four days.

According to the India’s Wildlife Act, the person, who kills the rare jackal, can be sent to jail for three years. Wildlife expert Ashok Chaudhry blamed the state government for not taking enough steps to protect such endangered species.

The 2002 government census says that India has some 4,300 jackals living mostly in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Chhattisgarh.

The local police have accepted that some villagers had earlier complained about the jackals attacking and injuring their children and damaging sugarcane crops. The police have now sealed a sugar cane processing facility to investigate the possible role of its owner in the killings of jackals.